


And The Room Froze

by lavenders__blue



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blood, Dreaming, Fighting, Hallucinations, Horror, Mentions of Blood, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Clone Wars, POV CT-7567 | Rex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Ridge - Freeform, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29207232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenders__blue/pseuds/lavenders__blue
Summary: "What else are memories if not dreams themselves?"Inspired and quoted by the series "Lucids," this work follows that dark little voice that sits on the shoulder of Captain Rex and, at other times, plants its fist in his face.Warning for blood, violence, and hallucinations
Kudos: 9





	And The Room Froze

Wide-eyed and full of steeled Republic resolve, a freshly-shorn CT-7567 had sat stoically in the training chair, eyes trained towards the learning bot as it described the risks of repeated battle exposure. 

List after list of symptoms it had detailed “...heightened anxiety

depression, 

night terrors and hallucinations, 

lack of focus and flashbacks 

anger and-”

  
  


“Captain Rex?”

The wall refocuses as CT-7567 scrubs a hand down his face and takes a moment to return to that steel Republic resolve, turning back into the glow of the holomap table. The room is still oddly blurry, and his head has been swimming. For how long, he can’t remember. He can hear the gentle _pitter patter_ of rain somewhere.

“Sir.”

General Windu spares barely a glance before continuing to go over mission protocols. Something about formations necessary for the next operation that Rex is certain he should be paying attention to, but the steel in his knees seem to be the only thing keeping him upright as the room’s chatter echoes in his head.

He doesn’t miss the occasional look General Skywalker keeps tossing him from across the room; Rex knows the weary list to his body is just as telling as the red spray still painted across his shin guards, and he’s not the only one looking more haggard than usual. The blue glow of the various displays washes across worn boots and various weary looks dominating bucketless troopers. The town hadn’t gone easily, but the village of innocent farmers only seem to win in the holonovelas, and for that, Rex is swaying with a familiar numbness. The weight has accompanied every town, every village, every city that they can’t seem to hold on this kriff-forsaken, sun-beaten planet that the Senate had decided was a turning point in the war, and it speaks of comforting surviving villagers while trying just so hard to ignore the bloody plastoid baking in the sun a meter away. 

It didn’t seem to matter that they had nearly every Jedi on the Council present. Ahsoka had come back from their squad’s most recent recon mission with nothing more than ghosts, a familiar find, and later they would find skewered and charred bodies littering the roads and plumes of smoke in the distance, late to the party once again. Gaping mouths frozen in fear yawned towards them from the town’s central dais where they had fractured the concrete, and massive slabs tossed aside to create a crown for a massive pit, littered with shards of colorful tile and wisps of smoke. Over and over, village after village. 

Ridge had sat next to him one night, shoulders telling of weariness, eyes hollow and cheeks gaunt and underneath all of it, an untold anger and the ever-permeating smell of death lacing his blacks. He hadn’t looked up when he spoke.

“Do you blame yourself? _”_

He had moved about his rucksack almost as if he didn’t speak a word, and Rex would have believed it had he not resettled with his meal expectantly.

“I asked,

  
  


_Do you blame yourself?”_

Anakin is looking at him and his mouth is moving but there’s no sound but that _pitter patter_ . The holotable is empty. Footsteps echo down the hall. The room is empty. The rain rushes in his ears. In the corner of the room, laserbolt cuts a softly glowing hole in a hunched backpiece, and somewhere, everywhere, a slow _pitter patter_ of blood traces over paintless armor to puddle on the ground. 

“What?”

He’s standing next to a dimly glowing display, back to Rex, blaster hanging limply at his side. The room is still, and it’s only him and the figure in the corner in a once busy room. Stars in lightspeed streak by outside the bay window, but there’s no noise, no hum of the generator or movement of technicians on floors below, and the stars look… _wrong_ , swirling and dimming and flickering and backwards and dark and impossible, almost like when his table fritzes and there’s still that _pitter patter_ of rain. Rex can’t remember when they jumped. The tableroom screens are blank, and the holotables flash random pieces of Aurebesh. A single overhead light shines somewhere next to him, and the figure turns, looking over its shoulder ever so slightly to be illuminated by the pale blue display glow. As he moves, Rex dimly recognises that the figure’s chest does not rise in breath. He doesn’t recognise that his footsteps are soundless.

_“Well...”_

Rex’s hand closes around nothing as the blaster clatters to the floor. His breaths come short and sharp and the room is still oddly blurry.

  
  


_“It’s quite common in this situation_

_for a soldier to feel a kind of,_

_guilt.”_

  
  


Hot breath on his ear whips Rex to the right to meet a blank helmet, exactly as a fist catches him in the ribs. A short gasp doubles him over, and hands grab the back of his head to slam his nose directly into an armored knee. Pain explodes in his shoulder as the hands wrapped around his wrist slam his arm up with a vicious _crack_ , and shove him into a holotable. Stumbling as blood fills his eyes and coats the table, Rex flings a blind arm out wildly, grabbing for anything, everything.

His hands close around stillness in an empty room and his chest heaves.

Breaths quick and heavy, wild eyes darting, he clutches his arm to his side and wipes blood from his eyes where he's half-collapsed against the table.

“What, what situation?”

As he presses himself up, movement catches in his swimming vision just in time to block a swung arm, for an opposite hand shoots out to catch at his throat. A short cut down breaks the hold and he swings his head forward to crack into familiar plastoid that vanishes before contact is made. Whirling around to face nothing, an arm laces around his neck and his fingers scrabble at the bicep curling around. The arms locked around him squeeze tight, tight, tighter and his toes creep up, up, up off the ground until black creeps into view before they vanish and Rex crumples to the floor.

A moment, two, three passes in wheezing silence before Rex notices the figure off to his side standing in the light of the doorway. His armor is blank as a shiny’s, arms dangling empty at his side. 

The steady _pitter patter,_ has returned to echo impossibly loud in his ears. 

Rex staggers to a stand and takes the opportunity to run at the figure and gets close enough to wrap his good arm around its waist, to slam the body into the ground before its helmet dislodges, bouncing off against the floor. Rex throws a leg over the figure’s waist and yanks his one good fist back in the light.

_“The accident.”_

He remembers when he took his first ride in the flight simulator. The dark, carpeted room had been still and warm, and the only light source had been the screen depicting a training course over what he now knows as Felucia. They hadn’t warned him, he remembers, of the swooping feeling in your gut, the absolute terror the first time you fail to open flaps, of the reality, the panic of falling and falling and being powerless to do anything but sit and pray. They hadn’t warned him of the _silence;_ blank eyes, prone bodies, and that the steady _pitter patter_ of ink doesn't make a sound.

  
There is no sound now. Not in the ragged breaths escaping his chest, not in that same _pitter patter,_ not in the gently lolling helmet that escaped vacant brown eyes, dull blonde hair, a concave temple and limp arms. Rex’s vision blurs with blood and daze and his own image lying before him and as he topples forward, a gentle _pitter patter_ closes around him.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: vod-ika
> 
> Inspiration and some dialogue for this is from Nicholas Podany's Youtube series ["Lucids"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHheF8KaVlU&list=PLK6Fc2NXlh5CWseXPBnsC1Ux3WPPu5zqK) which you should absolutely go watch. This dialogue is specifically from [part three.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7l5AOOqNyQ&list=PLK6Fc2NXlh5CWseXPBnsC1Ux3WPPu5zqK&index=4)
> 
> Stay safe and healthy, friends.


End file.
